I’d use “Another Brick in the Wall” but that would be trespassing on DougJ’s balliwick. If the ‘bomb here, bomb now, bomb forever’ cheerleaders are losing the established media stalwarts on Afghanistan, how will they ever gin up another excellent adventure in Iran?
… The reason you hear so little about Lyndon Johnson nowadays despite his stupendous achievements — Medicare, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — is that Vietnam laid his reputation low. Johnson’s war on poverty was derailed by Vietnam, and it was Vietnam that tragically split the Democratic Party and opened the door to the antiwar candidacies of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. The ultimate beneficiaries, of course, were Richard Nixon and the Republicans.
__
President Obama does not buy the comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, and he has a point when he says that the U.S. was not attacked from Vietnam. But Sept. 11, 2001, was nearly a decade ago, and the war in Afghanistan was hopelessly bungled by the Bush crowd. There is no upside to President Obama’s escalation of this world-class fiasco.
__
We are never going to build a stable, flourishing society in Afghanistan. What we desperately need is a campaign of nation-building to counteract the growing instability and deterioration in the United States.
__
Zandar
Well, we could have John Bolton say “If we don’t bomb them by Saturday, this Death Star will be fully operational! We have no choice! DO IT NOW! GET TO DA CHOPPAH!”
BR
Folks need to read some Chalmers Johnson and remind themselves of how bad the military-industrial-media complex has gotten.
Linda Featheringill
Sometimes it looks grim.
But if we actually are out of both Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012, maybe we will have half a chance.
There may be other issues to take their places.
What to do? Don’t know. Maybe try to encourage the political people that are trying to do the right thing?
Omnes Omnibus
@Zandar: Basically, according to Bolton, if we don’t attack in the next week we shouldn’t do it at all. So all Obama needs to do is hold out against those calling for bombing for a week, and then they will stop. Sounds like a plan.
BR
@Linda Featheringill:
Here’s the thing I wonder: how will we ever leave when we have a $1 billion, Vatican-sized embassy in Iraq?
And oil companies aren’t going to want us to leave since we may be providing a modicum of security there.
beltane
Time to bring the troops home. The American media has made it clear that we are now at war with Islam in general, not with Al-Qaida in particular. It is a war we cannot win, and our troops have no business fighting in that kind of war.
JR
Nothing about the war in Afghanistan is really about Afghanistan. It’s about Pakistan, and trying to get the Pakistani government to engage in any strategies or schemes that might weaken the fundamentalist whackadoodles who could someday fairly soon seize, win, buy or otherwise control access the country’s nuclear arsenal.
The point of escalating in Afghanistan is that someone in DC thinks it will help the long-term situation in the unstable nuclear state next door.
It’s not good, but it’s a reason. Call it the domino theory of Islamic fundamentalism.
cat48
Eh, don’t get too excited about Herbert. He really doesn’t care for Obama that much……truly never has. I stopped reading him over a year ago. That doesn’t mean he’s right or wrong…….he simply has never liked one thing Obama has done. O is not liberal enough for Herbert. Period.
morzer
@Omnes Omnibus:
I vote for giving them a week to come to terms, and then dropping John Bolton, Karl Rove, the staff of Reason and Megan McArdle and the GOP Congress Critters on Tehran. Considering what that little lot have done to our economy and society, I’d imagine even Ahmadi Nejad would see sense. Of course, we would then have the issue of what to do with these biological weapons, but one problem at a time, eh?
Omnes Omnibus
@morzer: Harsh.
General Stuck
The neo cons are like rats with no cheese. But lots of sleaze.
beltane
@morzer: We could end the war and help pay off the national debt by selling Megyn Kelly and the rest of the Fox News blonds as wives to Afghan warlords. Don’t laugh; it might work.
cleek
we won’t be.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: The ladies might even be willing to go for it; after all, someone married Limbaugh again.
MBunge
We’re on track to have about 500 Americans killed in Afghanistan this year. That’ll be the highest U.S. death toll so far. At the height of Vietnam, over 16,000 American soliders were killed in a single year. Could we please stop comparing the two?
Mike
Omnes Omnibus
@MBunge: No.
Cermet
Until the US is an exact image of Iran with their religious control of all laws, and veto control of the government, and when banks, investment houses, and military related corporationscontrol all US worker’s SS benefits as investments to loose, and the definition of middle class is only those making $500 K/year and anyone else making less than this pays full taxes, can’t afford a home, or real health insurance, then and only then will the wet dreamn of repub-a-thugs come fully true as the Taliban are finally laid to reat as the usless boggymen that they really are and their true religious allies (really both extreme’s) – the so-called christians (that Christ – the worlds first true communist – would fully disown and denounce) – can then be free to care about family values as they eat the cast away scrapes and garbage that the real elite throw out and amerika, land of the free to die from lack of health care, poor chemical laced and fat filled food and no decent jobs paying more than min wage becomes the shinning beacon that all sane people in the world flee from.
Roger Moore
@morzer:
That’s some high yield evil and stupidity there; might that classify as a crime against humanity? And if we don’t drop them on Tehran, can we drop them into an active volcano, a crucible of molten steel, or some other environment that’s inimical to life?
Zifnab
In all fairness, the drum beat on Afghanistan has dimmed considerably. The drum beat on Iraq is virtually non-existent. The winger media tends to be somewhat myopic, and with all attention focused squarely on the Ground Zero Mosque, it’s not a huge surprise that war support is losing steam.
That said, you only have to look as far as a Burlington’s to understand that the drum beat for Iran is very real and possible. Back in ’02, even GWB was decrying violence against Muslims. One of the long-touted reasons for invading Iraq and Afghanistan remains humanitarian.
All that common wisdom surrounding the American-Friendly Arab / Persian / Kurd goes right out the window the moment the wingers need to make a point. And inside a week, we’ve got half a dozen surveys telling us that popular opinion strongly opposes Muslims, Mosques, and construction projects near ground zero.
The media railroaded consensus on the Cordoba House. That’s the real Iranian drumbeat. Because if you can scare people shit less about a Muslim YMCA in downtown Manhattan, how hard can it be to convince the public that Iranians are going to carpet nuke us in our sleep?
Redshift
@Roger Moore: Oh, I think it depends on how high we dropped them from…
mai naem
Exactly how is us being in Afghanistan going to avoid the fundies from grabbing the nukular arms in Pakistan? This is ridiculous. I have a friend who just came back from spending the summer in Zambia. The Indians have come in and are investing bigtime in Zambia. Apparently there’s some uranium been found in Zambia. There’s oil in Tanzania and the Chinese have gone in there and made friends. The Chinese have gone into South America making friends there for natural resources. Some huge Indian telecom either bought out completely or has bought a good chunk of the major South African telecom. And I haven’t even gotten into green energy investments. Meanwhile, we are stuck in Afghanistan, pissing away our money. We haven’t even finished in Iraq and we pissed away even more money there. And, oh, BTW Afghanistan is in China’s and India’s neighborhood. Maybe, just, maybe they need to understand that it’s not a good idea to have islamist fundies with bombs living next to you. Maybe, they need to get their asses involved in there. The cost of lost opportunity to the US is massive.
cat48
@MBunge:
I agree…..the 2 wars are nothing alike. At the high point, 400 soldiers per WEEK were killed & they were DRAFTED!
Zandar
@Zifnab:
This. This right here. Especially when the narrative increasingly becomes “Obama will have to in order to save his Presidency“.
Toast
Hey, check it out: Alternet lists Balloon Juice’s own E.D. Kain as one of 10 Young Right Wingers Being Prepped to Take Over the Conservative Movement!
So, Erik, is this assignment part of your training? :-)
Mnemosyne
@Zandar:
I’m still waiting for someone to show me why they think Obama will listen to anything Elliot Abrams or Jeffrey Goldberg thinks.
I realize the Republicans just love to give “advice” to Democrats and the media just loves to run with it, but, seriously, you really think that Elliott Abrams is dictating our foreign policy?
bobbo
I served with Walter Cronkite. I knew Walter Cronkite. Walter Cronkite was a friend of mine. You, Bob Herbert, are not Walter Cronkite.
cat48
I haven’t read Ambinder in a while. I have to see what he says about Iran. He’s been more accurate than anyone else I’ve read when it comes to what Obama might do.
Davis X. Machina
@BR:
Airplanes mostly. Some trucks too…
Allison W.
@Mnemosyne:
because it worked on bush and obama is just like bush and this is bush’s third term.
Allison W.
@cat48:
Here ya go:
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/08/what-the-white-house-really-thinks-about-bombing-iran/61650/
Bill Murray
@Davis X. Machina: not helicopters off the roofs?
AhabTRuler, V
Cronkite was a dickhead about the Cap Cod wind farm.
</bitter>
Wonder how Herbert feels?
Davis X. Machina
@Bill Murray: In an age of shoulder-fired, heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles, I’m not sure we’ll own the airspace anywhere except the airport.
Anyhow, Stein’s Law — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” — applies to empires, too.
AhabTRuler, V
@Bill Murray: We’re taking you to the laundry ship, the USS Walter Mondale.
Geeno
@MBunge: Yes, there were fewer deaths than Viet Nam, but we have thousands of traumatic head injuries and massive burn victims coming home that would’ve died in Viet Nam. So, I would maintain they are comparable.
Ruckus
@Cermet:
Only one little flaw. There will be no minimum wage.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Not a problem, drop them from 40 thousand feet. Did I mention no chutes?
Geeno
@mai naem: Why would India care? We installed an India friendly government,
That’s why Pakistan gave shelter to the Taliban. They want the Pakistan friendly Taliban to drive out the India friendly Karzai government.
srv
Obviously he’s trying to bury that whole Gulf of Tonkin thing.
And this “we must be there to prevent rag-tag tribes from overthrowing a country of 160M with the 7th largest army in the world and getting their nukular bomz!” meme…
JC on a pogo-stick. The onus is on you fantasists to come up with a plausible scenario of that happening. Like 1000 Taliban vs 1,000,000M army guys with tanks, helicopter gunships and a squadron of USAF AC-130’s. I’ll send you a 1000 gi joe figures if you’ll provide the 1M and an appropriately sized sandbox.
Mark
Slightly off-topic, but Bob Herbert can suck my balls. His opposition to health care reform was utterly spineless, and watching him parrot talking points from New York state’s unions, which were inexplicably opposed to it, made me sick.
When Ronald Reagan died, Bob Herbert wrote not one negative word.
Way to speak truth to power there Bobby
Bob Loblaw
@cat48:
Oh, well, that’s clarifying…
Mnemosyne
@srv:
How about a massive natural disaster destabilizing the government in Pakistan?
Ruckus
@Geeno:
In scope, not magnitude. But then we had a draft and all that meat had to go somewhere and be used for something.
DickSpudCouchPotatoDetective
Bob Herbert is a nice, well intentioned guy. He’s written some useful stuff and championed a good cause or two.
But he ain’t Walter Cronkite.
srv
@Mnemosyne: Zadari is not the government. The Pakistani gov’t is bigger than their army. It’s like you’re saying the US government was about to be overthrown in Katrina. Try to start making sense.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
If you think that Pakistan is exactly as stable politically as the US was in 2005 when Katrina hit so therefore there’s no way that a massive natural disaster that will likely cause widespread famines could possibly harm the stability of the country, then it’s true we have nothing to talk about, because you’re the one living in a fantasy world.
ETA: Remind me, which country had a military coup more recently: Pakistan or the US? But I guess that doesn’t count towards a country’s stability.
Violet
@mai naem:
Totally agree. The Chinese are all over Africa making “friends” by building roads and stadiums and water treatment plants. And oh yeah, they get oil rights and other benefits in return. They have zero compunction about buying favors. The US on the other hand is very slow and won’t give aid to any country that doesn’t teach abstinence. It’s utterly ridiculous.
You are absolutely right when you talk about the cost of lost opportunity. The US is going to be even more owned by China than we know. At some point those chickens are going to come home to roost.
Mnemosyne
Remember when the US president declared a national state of emergency and had the justices of the Supreme Court arrested when they said it was illegal for him to do it?
Oh, no, wait, that happened in Pakistan in 2007, not here in the US. The stability of our governments is so similar that I got confused for a minute.
El Cid
Fuck, I’d hardly suggest that Robert Kennedy, who very well might have won, being blown away by a deranged angry Palestinian nationalist just get listed under things which harmed the Democratic Party because of the US’ slaughter of Indochinese civilians in the order of millions.
AhabTRuler, V
@El Cid: Hmm, yes, that’s what I thought when I read it too.
srv
@Mnemosyne:
Remind me to always thank you for making my points for me.
All these military coups, and we didn’t see nukes flying into the hands of AQ. What has any of this got to us having to stay in Afghanistan to make Pakistan MORE stable? Gee, you and eemom need to stop making so much sense and regurgitating Bill Kristol’s talking points.
Who, exactly, in your imagination are these radicals who are going to take over the Pakistani army, rule over the government and distribute the nukular bomz to Osama? If we’re at the cusp of that, surely you can come up with a name, and how exactly 160M people and the entire body politic there are going to follow him.
And before you go off in another tangent about how the ISI is riven with Talibanist, you obviously don’t know who in that relationship is wearing the pants.
Let me educate: it’s not the ones living in caves.
mclaren
No he doesn’t.
America was not attacked from Afghanistan.
9/11 was planned in Germany and rehearsed and trained for in Florida flight schools.
If we want to attack the countries where evil Al Qaeda operatives planned and trained for 9/11, we’re gonna have to invade Germany and Florida.
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Yep, if something hasn’t happened yet, that’s proof positive that it couldn’t possibly ever happen, so there’s no reason to take precautions against it happening. Wait, which one of us is supposedly living in a fantasy world?
Again, if you have absolutely no idea why it’s a problem for the Taliban to simultaneously be taking over big chunks of Pakistan and making a comeback in Afghanistan, then I can’t help you.
But, hey, I’m sure the president of Pakistan doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says, “I believe that the international community, which Pakistan belongs to, is in the process of losing the war against the Taliban.” I’m sure that you, sitting in your living room in the US, know much more about the situation in Pakistan than Pakistan’s president.
If you want to argue about whether we’re doing more harm than good by being there, then that’s a sensible argument to make. I think it’s a debatable point.
But pretending that the Taliban is no threat at all and that there’s no possible way for them to destabilize Pakistan is living in a fantasy world.
General Stuck
@mclaren:
You’ve written some specious shit Mclaren, but this pretty much takes the cake.
mclaren
@Mnemosyne:
You’re an ignorant sociopathic crank, Mnemosyne. All the area experts laugh at this latest Domino Theory.
It’s bullshit. There is no more chance of the Taliban taking over Pakistan than there is of the Tea Partiers taking over Washington D.C. Most of Pakistan is secular, highly educated, full of people who believe in an entirely different religion who have zero sympathy for the Taliban, and the Taliban has made no inroads whatever throughout the vast majority of Pakistan’s territory.
Of course countless articles debunk
Mnemosyne’s bullshit, but she keeps on gullibly parroting the latest Domino Theory. First the Taliban take over Pakistan, then they take over India, then they take over China…it’s insane. This is the same old 1960s bullshit the warmongers tried with Vietnam. If we don’t stop them in Saigon, their troops will be pouring into San Diego from Tijuana!
Horseshit. Domino Theories are just another delusional fairytale told by greedy self-interested Pentagon warmongers in a desperate bid to grab more cash for their failed and useless weapons systems and their impotent army run by incompetent cowards and staffed with rapists and gang members.
Fabius Maximus blog, 16 August 2010.
mclaren
More evidence that Mnemosyne is spewing ignorant sociopathic lies:
Source: Don’t be fooled by the Taliban hysteria in Pakistan: they aren’t gonig to take over, Pepe Escobar, Alternet, 1 May 2009.
Haven’t you people figured out yet that everything that comes out of Mnemosyne’s mouth is an ignorant lie?
AxelFoley
@cat48:
This. He seems to spend most of his columns bitching about Obama. I don’t recall this tool bitching about Bush this much.
mclaren
@General Stuck:
As an ignorant pathological liar, anything you say will be the opposite of the truth. Tellingly, you deny my facts but fail to provide any evidence to rebut ’em.
Source: “Afghanistan: A War Of Lies,” Eric Margolis, 12 October 2009.
Or simply google “planning of the September 11 attacks” in Wikipedia.
Study the complete 9/11 timeline here. The planning took place in Germany and Spain. Wiretap intercepts of 9/11 plotters came from Italy and Germany. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were highly educated engineers from Saudi Arabia in Europe on visas.
Keep denying the documented facts, crackpot. It destroys your credibility even faster.
srv
@Mnemosyne:
We are always losing the war against [insert bs cause here].
Let me translate that for you: Bitches, give me more money and aid or there will be an apocolypse! Oh, please ignore the ISI giving some of that to the Afghan Taliban…
You’re like the insane folks who think we aren’t giving enough aid the narco state of Mexico to win the drug war.
All your premises are wrong.
General Stuck
@mclaren: The nine eleven attacks were planned and financed from Afghanistan by OBL, a country ruled by the Taliban with an iron fist, and hand in glove with Osama, allowing networks of terror training camps throughout it’s borders. The fact that there were staging areas in other countries is irrelevant to who and where the plot was hatched, financed, and controlled from.
You are an insane liar and brigand that infests this blog and the internet with misinformation and steamy piles of stupid. Your only saving grace is that you are hardly alone in this regard.
Brett
I don’t think it’s really fair to say that it was “derailed”, since Johnson had a very big part in Vietnam turning out like it did. His Vietnam Policymaking was an incoherent disaster (not surprising when you have Robert McNamara, probably the worst Secretary of Defense in the Twentieth Century, in charge and whispering in your ear), and much of it was his fault. He kept screwing around with it because he was constantly afraid of it sabotaging his Great Society programs’ political status, with the result being that there was no coherent strategic planning for the situation.
mclaren
@BR:
Chalmers Johnson or Andrew Bacevich, equally good. The best current source for a detailed necropsy on our broken military-industrial-surveillance complex remains America’s Defense Meldown, a classic compilation with chapters by Johnson, Bacevich and William S. LInd, among others.
Other books on our massively dysfunctional military-industrial-surveillence state worth perusing:
The Limits of Power – The End of American Exceptionalism, by Andrew J. Bacevich, 2008.
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War by Andrew J. Bacevich, 2006.
Three crucial books by Chalmers Johnson form a trilogy:
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.
Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy Of Imperial America by Stephen Lendman. Amazingly, written in 1972, recently updated in 2003 for the second edition. As timely today as it was then.
The Bases of Empire: The Global Struggle Against U.S. Military Posts, a seminal collection of articles on United States militarism and imperialism, edited by Catherine Lutz.
The Three Trillion Dollar War – The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict By Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes.
Day of Empire – How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance – and Why They Fall, by Amy Chua. Essentially she traces the repeated history of empires which overreach, bankrupt themselves, and collapse amid financial implosions and delusions of world-dominating grandeur.